liberation

Don Brash’s return to Orewa – opening up divisions in National

Don Brash’s return to Orewa on Saturday to give his fifth ‘Orewa speech’ is remarkable – not just because it attempts to reawaken the spirit of previous populist and landmark speeches that ignited political debate – but because Brash is actually focusing his firepower against his own party, National. The speech by Brash is a thinly veiled attack on the John Key-led National Government, and thus represents the opening up of divisions within the National Party between the moderates and the radicals. In this divide, Brash is clearly taking up the leadership of the rightwing radical faction of the party that would like to see its own government be more courageous and principled in issues of economics and ethnic affairs. Essentially Brash is asking National to go back to being a ‘true blue’ National Party in government instead of a Labour-lite one that continues to govern with most of the same policies as the Labour-led government that it replaced. Quite validly, Brash argues that ‘our Party fought for the right to govern and to lead, not simply to hold office’. This blog post constitutes the analysis that I made of the speech and gave to the NZ Herald, which reports some of my thoughts in this article by Rebecca Lewis. [Read more below]

 

The Beige Party (formerly known as the Green Party)

The co-leader of the Green Party, Russel Norman, apparently has trouble telling the difference between red and blue – he’s colour-blind according to a revealing and in-depth article about the changing political direction of the Green Party. The article in the Dominion Post by Nikki Macdonald opens by saying that ‘Green politics is the new, well, red and blue’, and goes through the dilemmas that the party is facing as it pushes towards the centre of the political spectrum with the new leadership keen to pick up all different hues of political support. The supposedly red-green ideological combination is out of favour with the leadership, and the party is determined to diversify by adding blues and other hues to the green brand. According to the article, this is alienating those that remain in the party’s leftwing activist base, while senior business-oriented stalwarts are celebrating the move away ‘the socialist side’ of the political divide. Yet despite the internal disagreement over which bright ideological political colours the party should be orientating towards, the article seems to suggest that in reality the whole parliamentary caucus of the party is essentially now colour-blind and they actually seem to prefer the colour beige most of all. [Read more below]

Reflections on Helen Clark’s time as PM

The New Zealand public doesn’t hear much from Helen Clark these days. Ensconced in her United Nations career in New York, she’s generally not talking to the media about anything to do with her time as Prime Minister (‘I never talk about that’,’ That’s for others to judge’). So it’s good to see the Sunday Star-Times running a piece today on Clark in their Sunday magazine (which is normally reserved for much more lightweight lifestyle features). ‘View from the top’ (or, the alternative title, ‘Helen in New York’) is written by freelance journalist Sam Eichblatt who went and interviewed Clark at the UN in New York. She also rung me for some comments about Helen Clark’s time as prime minister, which have ended up being published, so this blog post reproduces those comments, expands on some of the points I made, and also highlights some of the other observations made in the article. [Read more below].

 

10 pertinent questions (and answers) about axing the MP international travel perk

With salary packages of between $180,000 and $500,000, New Zealand Members of Parliament currently earn more than 99% of their constituents. This gross economic inequality between voters and their representatives is due to a combination of factors, but mostly it reflects the belief of MPs that they are ‘professional politicians’ rather than ‘public servants’ and that they therefore should be compensated with a market-based remuneration in line with those in other professional careers.

A large part of their salary package comes from their many opaque allowances and expenses, which have been surreptitiously added to their incomes over recent decades. The holiday travel subsidy that MPs legislated for themselves – in which they have received up to 90% off international flights, and for which National MP Pansy Wong has just resigned her Cabinet post over – has been one of the most contentious, illogical and flagrant ways in which MPs have attempted to inflate their personal affluence. Yet with the mounting public awareness of the rorts and misuse of taxpayer-funded parliamentary resources, together with recent increasing awareness and concern about economic inequality in New Zealand, there has never been a better time for the public to demand the rollback of MP salaries and perks. And the abolition of the international holiday travel subsidy has been a good place to start, although the devil is very much in the detail of how the perk is axed and how these supposedly minor details are sorted out.

This blog post outlines why the perk had to be axed, but more importantly it highlights the many crucial issues that are involved in the process of reforming the MP perks system. It does so by putting forward “10 pertinent questions” that the public and politicians need to consider, and also attempts to provide some detailed answers to them. In brief, this extensive blog post argues for the holiday perk to be totally axed without compensation, exemptions, or bureaucratic reviews. Former MPs need to be stripped of their entitlement, no new travel scheme should be re-established to replace the rort being axed, and we should avoid falling for the populist proposal that so-called ‘independent bodies’ (such as the Remuneration Authority) should determine MP pay, allowances and perks. [Read more below]

 

Lessons and images from the Hobbit dispute

The unusual dispute between actors and the producers of the Hobbit film production has been the biggest political issue of the year in New Zealand. Following on from the previous blog post entitled ‘We are not for the Hobbit workers, and we are not against them’ – Labour Party, I’ve been attempting to write a further post that looks at the political lessons of the event, especially in terms of the policy making process, the power of business, the state of the media, and the influence of nationalism on domestic politics. But obviously images are often more powerful than words, and so the following blog post omits my analysis in favour of all the satirical cartoons that I’ve been collecting – the good, the bad, and the silly – in the hope that they better convey the lessons of the dispute.

‘Does inequality Matter?’ An upcoming Wellington policy forum

In a further sign that the issue of economic inequality is a growing issue of political interest in New Zealand, a policy forum is being held in two weeks time in Wellington with the title Does Inequality Matter? It is being hosted by the VUW Institute of Policy Studies in association with the Centre for Theology and Public Issues at the University of Otago, and is essentially a continuation of an earlier forum held under the same title at Otago earlier in the year, in which I presented a paper entitled ‘Why economic inequality doesn’t matter: The politics of inequality in New Zealand’ (downloadable as a PDF here, or readable over four blog posts: 1, 2, 3, 4). As with the earlier Otago forum, the keynote address will be by Spirit Level co-author Prof Richard Wilkinson (via Skype). Other interesting participants include Paul Callister (Inequality and education/human capital), Philippa Howden-Chapman (Inequality and health), Gabrielle Maxwell (Inequality and criminal justice), Matthew Gibbons (Social mobility), Tony Blakely, Xavier Márquez, Jonathan Boston and David Bromell (whose ideas on inequality I’ve blogged about here). You can download a copy of the programme, or go to the Institute of Policy Studies website for more info. Appropriately, there is no charge to attend, but you need to register by emailing [email protected] - but you should do so quickly, as apparently the demand for places has been much greater than anticipated. 

Date: Tuesday 16 November 2010, 8:20am-5:30pm

Venue: Rutherford House LT3, Victoria University of Wellington, Pipitea Campus